Matthew Speiser

The first time it ever occurred to me that I might be a bad person was June of 1999. I was accompanying my parents to drop my sister off at summer camp. While my parents moved Gillian into her bunk, I commiserated with two similarly-aged boys over the one thing all young boys had in common at the turn of the 21st century: Pokemon cards. We had each brought our laminated binder of trading cards with us to this summer camp none of us were attending for reasons that feel both mildly embarrassing today (Pokemon cards were the most valuable thing we owned) and tragically quaint (young boys today are catfishing pedophiles on the internet). Naturally, our encounter quickly devolved into a pissing contest over who had the rarer collection. I proudly presented my favorite Pokemon card hoping to win my new friends’ respect and admiration, and was immediately dismissed out of hand by a supposedly “better” card in one of their collections. “That’s nothing, check out my Blastoise,” they’d say, or “Are you kidding me? Look at this Arcanine.” Like I’m a big dumb idiot for thinking my hologram Ninetails was ever cool to begin with.

The vibe of the interaction changed, however, when one of the boys pulled his hologram Charizard card out of the sleeve and allowed us each to hold it. For reasons both dark and mystical, I knew the moment that Charizard card hit my hand I was going to steal it. As far as I can recall, I’d never had this instinct before. But the rarity of the card, the apparent inadequacy of my current collection, and the evident inattentiveness of this 8-year-old boy with his dirty little fingernails made the prospect feel irresistible. Without compunction, I breezily slipped the Charizard card face down into an open slot in my binder and replaced the slot in his binder with a duplicate Poliwag card I had. A masterful sleight of hand. I closed the boy’s binder and handed it back to him, and moments later I said my goodbyes and went off to find my parents. I could hardly believe my good fortune.

A few hours later, as we were making our way to the car, I spotted the Charizard boy by the canteen. He was crying to his parents and violently swinging his binder up and down, as if it were a wild animal trying to escape his grasp. Pokemon cards streamed onto the ground. His parents seemed more embarrassed by the spectacle than anything. And he was too hysterical to notice me noticing him. So I got in the car and left. Once we were a safe distance from the camp, I delicately pulled the Charizard card out of my binder. I held it the rest of the ride home.

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One tragic aspect of adult life is that you can’t really steal anymore. Or rather, you can, but the consequences are a lot higher. Which I guess is true of a lot of illegal behaviors before and after the age of 18. But I personally feel a unique sense of grief for my bygone era of theft and thievery.

A formative film of my youth was the 2003 heist movie “The Italian Job.” In it, the Donald Sutherland character tells the Mark Wahlberg character “there are two kinds of thieves. Those that steal to enrich their lives. And those that steal to define their lives.” Sutherland encourages Wahlberg to be the former and not the latter, but the truth is I’ve always felt more drawn to stealing as a way of life vs. a way to get something I want. I don’t think I’ve ever needed anything I’ve stolen. But the feeling I used to get when I walked past the 7-11 store clerk while trying to stop the wintergreen Tic-Tacs I boosted from jangling in my pocket? It was exhilarating. A goddamn thrill ride. A high I chased again and again. To quote another great heist movie, for me the action is the juice.

My heydey of stealing came around the time I hit puberty. Up until then the Charizard card was my main score. And I think I traded it a year later for some Crazy Bones (an original hologram Charizard is worth thousands today). But from the ages of 12-18, there wasn’t a convenience store, pharmacy, or big box retailer I would visit where I wouldn’t at least think about stealing something. Like many a great thief, I started out small. Gum and candy mostly. Once I mastered the art of slipping a Snicker’s in the pocket of my cargo shorts without breaking stride, I moved on to bigger ticket items like toy cars, plastic sunglasses, Axe Body spray, and magazines (slip them under your shirt and pin them to your side with your arm). Whenever smuggling contraband, I’d make a point to seem extremely nonchalant at checkout. A passive boy. Standing beside my mom like I had no place else to be. Or, if I felt the heat was on, I’d approach the clerk and ask them to tell me where something is located in the store. Indirectly daring them to confront me on my theft. Which they never did because they were just a few years older than me and earning minimum wage. And because nobody wants to deal with a teenage boy dressed in Hot Topic who’s committing petty crime.

I learned how to steal through trial and error. I was caught stealing multiple times at my local 7-11, which mostly resulted in a tongue lashing from the middle-aged Indian clerk and an empty threat to call the police if I didn’t vacate the premises immediately. This prepared me for higher stakes robberies at places like Target, where I used to shove ugly hats under the waistband of my pants, and ShopRite, where I used to smuggle out 12-packs of soda by putting the box on the bottom rack of my shopping cart where the cashier never looks. It was understood that the penalty for getting caught stealing from these places was more severe than 7-11 (being held against your will in a scary “back office” until the authorities arrive). I often daydreamed about what I’d do if faced with that scenario, and ultimately decided I’d run as fast and as hard through anyone and anything that got in my way until I was safe. To this day, I still fantasize about running from the authorities after getting caught shoplifting, and it never fails to jack up my heart rate. However, I never was caught stealing from my local ShopRite. Because I was a good goddamn thief.

There was one job I truly bungled. I was 14 years old and on a family vacation in Cancun. We were visiting some kind of shopping center and I wandered into a sporting goods store that sold these cool looking Mexican soccer jerseys. Once I saw none of the jerseys had a security tag attached, I pulled the one I liked best off the hanger, balled it up, and shoved it in the big pocket of my cargo shorts. I had been on a hot streak with my thieving, but now I was flying way too close to the sun. The security guard made me immediately, but he allowed me to meander through the aisles and make for the exit before sounding the alarm. I didn’t run hard or fast when I heard it because I genuinely didn’t believe the alarm was for me. That’s how cocksure I was. The security guard grabbed my arm tightly and held me in his grip until the police arrived. Shoppers everywhere stopped and stared. I looked on shamefully as my father negotiated with the police, ultimately agreeing to pay for the soccer jersey so that his son could be released into his custody. I was extremely fortunate, but also humiliated. My parents angry and confused. And it didn’t help my case when, a few nights later, I got drunk for the first time in my life and threw up all over my hotel bed.

I wasn’t proud of that whole ordeal, but I also wasn’t discouraged by it. And it taught me a crucial lesson. In “The Italian Job,” Mark Wahlberg’s crew makes a point of staking out the guy they’re going to rob before executing the heist. I, on the other hand, walked right into a store I’d never set foot in before believing I could steal without consequence. From there on out, I deigned to never play another away game. I would only steal from places I was familiar with. The fact that those places were franchise retailers in my hometown was just coincidence. My activity was not a principled stand against corporate America. Just a circumstance of the spiritually depraved and misery-inducing landscape I grew up in. That said, I did have some honor as a thief. My main rule was that I wouldn’t steal from people I knew — Charizard boy notwithstanding. My teenage logic dictated that that was the line between thrill seeker and sociopath. The difference between Mark Wahlberg and Edward Norton, to bring it back to “The Italian Job.” At the same time, as I got older and started carousing around the neighborhood with friends instead of parents, we started stealing things together. Sometimes as a team. One running distraction while the other walks out the door. Or sometimes in competition. With each of us showing off our score in a nearby parking lot, often to the goth girls we were trying to impress.

My apex as a thief came after I got my driver’s license and started committing mild credit card fraud. By this point my tastes had evolved from marijuana and Hot Topic to marijuana and Ed Hardy, and I needed a part-time job to keep up with the lifestyle. So I became a chinese food delivery driver for Chef Wong 2, named in memorim of Chef Wong 1, which had burned down several years earlier. On an hourly basis, Chef Wong was probably the most lucrative job I’d have in life until about the age of 30. I was paid $30 per night plus tips to deliver Chinese food to the upper middle-class Jewish families that comprised my hometown. And I benefitted immensely from the subconscious racism of being pleasantly surprised to open your door and see a teenage white boy holding your dinner instead of a middle-aged Chinese man. By which I mean the tips were really good. But even still, I couldn’t keep my hand out of the cookie jar. Because the action is the juice. My scam was to add an extra tip to the merchant copy of the credit card receipt whenever the customer neglected to write in the total. This usually happened when they opted to tip in cash. I’d take their signed copy back to the car, add whatever they tipped in cash to the receipt, and then add that to the credit card total. These instances usually happened at least once or twice per shift, allowing me to double dip on tips. Anywhere from an extra $10 to $30 bucks per shift. Maybe not as fun as swiping Red Bull from Walgreen’s, but cleaner and more lucrative. To the best of my knowledge, no customer ever got wise to my scam. Either because they didn’t notice there was a few dollar discrepancy when reviewing their credit card bill, or because they didn’t care. It was the perfect crime. I was becoming a better thief.

In reading of my days of theft and thievery, you might see the picture of a troubled youth heading down the wrong path. And I guess you wouldn’t be wrong. But for what it’s worth, I truly believed I was a good boy. I maintained a B+ average and I did extracurriculars to pad my college applications. I viewed my low-stakes crime as normal angsty teenage boy behavior. A way to get a hit of adrenaline and test my boundaries. But I was dissuaded of that belief when I arrived at college and promptly accumulated three separate conduct violations in my first semester. Once again, I had made the mistake of playing an away game. My bags were barely unpacked before the RA caught me pregaming in my room on two separate occassions. And by the time I stumbled out of a party and up to a plain clothes officer with a beer in my hand, it was clear I’d learned nothing in Cancun all those years ago. For most students, three conduct violations is a suspension-level amount of conduct violations. But I received a stay of execution thanks to an impassioned letter I wrote to the Office of Student Conduct, setting me up for a career in which I write things to convince people to view something differently than they probably should. Still, it was made clear to me that I was skating on very thin ice. One more violation for the rest of my college career would result in my immediate suspension. And I was still a freshmen in my first semester.

It was against this backdrop that I decided to commit my most brazen theft to date.

It happened because we wanted to play beer pong. Me and the other guys in the dorm. And we knew there was an unmanned 24-hour laundromat down the block from our dorm with half a dozen folding tables that are regulation beer pong size. Like so many times before, the siren song of theft felt irresistible to me. Doubly so this time because it would help me win the respect and admiration of my peers. So without compunction, my roommate and I marched over to the laundromat and carried one of the folding tables out the back door. It was only after we returned to the dorm and the ping pong balls started flying that the panic attack set in. Because I was virtually certain there were cameras on the ceiling of that laundromat. And now they had video proof of my theft. And I was already skating on thin ice. I’d pretty much guaranteed my suspension, or possibly worse. I was a dead man walking. My priviledged ass had finally gone a bridge too far. My comeuppance was at hand. Deservedly so. I told this to all of my friends. And I watched with desperation as the respect and admiration they’d had for me moments ago drained from their faces. Until finally my roommate agreed to carry the folding table back to the laundromat with me.

That was the last time I ever stole anything in my life. I was finally scared straight. Because now I really had something to lose. And for what it’s worth, nobody ever inquired about the folding table. But I got suspended from school the next semester anyway for riding a bike while drunk.

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Most people have that invasive thought of jumping when they’re standing on the edge of someplace really high up. Or reaching for the police officer’s service weapon when it’s within arm’s reach. I had the invasive thought of stealing whenever I was in a store, and I acted on it again and again. And it ruled. Because stealing is fun. Not good. Not moral. Just fun. And you can disagree. And you can judge me. But before you do, I recommend you try stealing something yourself. Just once. Just for the experience. Go to your local CVS and swipe something off the shelf. Be subtle about it. Maybe pretend your studying shampoo bottles. And then see how you feel. I bet your palms get clammy. Your eyes start darting around looking for security cameras. Your breath shortens. Maybe you start walking quickly towards the exit. You’re worried the security guard is watching you. You’re mentally preparing for that moment when someone yells “stop!” or grabs you by the arm. Your heart is beating out of your chest. You’ve never felt so alive. It’s the type of experience that’s fleeting in adult life. That sense of risk. Of coloring outside the lines just for the hell of it. It’s the one thing I find relatable about Donald Trump. And compared to his thievery, stealing some Trident from a chain pharmacy is as quaint as bringing your Pokemon cards to your sister’s summer camp.

I don’t steal anymore for the same reasons you probably don’t steal. I have more to lose. And getting caught would be painfully embarrassing. But I mostly don’t steal anymore because it makes me feel guilty. Which is something I didn’t really wrestle with before my pre-frontal cortex was fully developed. Or maybe I was just better at ignoring it. Or maybe I was a bad person, and now I’m a better person. I don’t know. All the good stuff is locked behind plexiglass now anyways. And the clerks watch the self-checkout kiosks like a hawk. And you can get caught speeding on the highway by a camera. And marijuana is legal. All my favorite means of petty crime are gone. Society as a whole is measurably less deviant. Which is probably good, but it’s certainly more boring.

The other day some guy in a coffee shop asked me to watch his laptop while he went to the bathroom. His request tickled me because I was probably the one person in the coffee shop most likely to steal from him. I allowed the thought to enter my mind. What it would feel like to thieve again. Before I knew it I was breathing fast. My heart rate rising. My fingers dancing. I looked around the room. The traces of a smile on my face. By the time he sat back down, I was gone.